The Transparent Life: Open heart.. Open Hands.. Open Life

When the Wrong Words Come Out…

Happy Wednesday! It’s the middle of the week and that is so exciting. Today we at Truth Unplugged are so excited about our guest blogger, Becky Kopitzke. I met Becky this summer at She Speaks and she was such a ray of sunshine! Her transparency and humor make the awkward topics a little less awkward and a little more doable. I hope you enjoy her post!

“Mommy, show me your boobie!”

“Excuse me?” My eyebrows shot up. “Show you my what?”

My three-year-old dashed from the playroom to where I sat in a kitchen chair. “Your boobie! On your arm!”

Oops. Occasionally I wrestle a bit with self-control. Do you? Frustration bubbles up and spills out my mouth, through grinding teeth and under fiery dragon breath. I don’t necessarily roar at full volume, I mean, I do have some godly discretion (see this halo on my head?). Often I’m just grumbling to myself.

But even if I only think the nasty words and never give them a voice, they’re still a symptom of some ailment brewing deeper than my throat. It’s my heart that needs the check-up.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it,” (Proverbs 4:23).

What does it mean to guard your heart? I used to believe this meant building walls of discipline around it, stacking prayers and memorized scripture like bricks, one on top of another until I’d constructed a pious barrier from which raw emotions could nev-ah escape, mwuahahaha.

But it turns out the wall wasn’t bulletproof. I’d get hit with a bad day or a surge of unruly hormones, and those bricks cracked and crumbled, leaving me exposed, cranky, and suddenly inflicted with a colorful vocabulary.

Slowly now, I’m discovering a more authentic definition. Perhaps, to “guard your heart” means to tend it, watch over it, nurture it. To let it thrive and not suffocate.

It means acknowledging the raw emotions as part of who and whose I am, even in my ugliest moments.

I am a child of God. My heart belongs to him.

So. This is usually the part of the story where the blogger invites you to clean up your act, tame your tongue, rise above the temptation of sin. True, the Bible is full of verses on why we shouldn’t shout “crap” in front of our kids, and I’m in total support of them.

But today, I want to remind you what else the Bible says.

Grace.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God,” (Ephesians 3:16–19, emphasis added).

We’re all going to mess up. We’re all going to have days when emotions scramble to the surface and spew out the wrong pipe. But don’t define yourself by them. Recognize that you are human, you are trying, and God loves you through it all.

He isn’t just helping you guard your heart. He’s living within it.

Heaven knows I need to remember that. You, too?

Let’s do it together. Show me your boo-boos and I’ll show you mine.

Join me every week for a new devotion at beckykopitzke.com. I can’t wait to meet you there.